The Ice Cream Man Cometh
by SnoOza
Summary: In a different world, he will be... [AxelRoxas friendship]
1. Beginning

Title adapted from Eugene O'Neill's brilliant play The Iceman Cometh (read it!), story inspired by this gorgeously poignant fanart Betsu na Sekai: deviantartDOTcom/deviation/33198128/

Much thanks to spiralheaven, one of the best betas I've ever had the good fortune to come across. :)

Notes:  
This is _not_ an aimless piece of AU fluff. This is actually part of what should be a one-shot, which I split up into several chapters due to length. The story has a point, but you're going to have to stick with me to find out what that is (and I really hope you do, because I believe this chapter functions best in the context of the whole). Till then, comments, criticism and guesses as to the plot direction are very much welcome! Hope to see you next chapter. :D

* * *

The Ice Cream Man Cometh  
_alt. A Different World_

**Beginning**

'_In a different world, the sky will be less black and more blue.'_

It was the last week of the summer holidays and the world was a sketchbook etched in with marker colours of blue and red and green...but most of all gold, bold, dazzling _gold._

Roxas glared lengthily at the sun.

"It's too hot," he complained, stretching out his legs and kicking a little petulantly at the grass. He squinted at the brilliantly sparkling expanse of water before him. "I wish there were some way to cool down before the ice cream man comes."

"Go dunk yourself in the lake then," Axel said irritably, shredding a blade of grass into miniscule pieces and watching it join a pile of its dead comrades on the ground.

"Har, har," Roxas said humourlessly. "That'd be a great suggestion, if only it were realistic."

Axel shrugged. "Hey, you asked, I answered."

Roxas glared at him. "You know as well as I do that the lake is out of bounds to anyone who values their life. I mean, thinking about it already gives me the shivers."

"Success!" Axel crowed, throwing a bunch of leaf bits in the air for effect. "And you are cooled again."

Roxas rolled his eyes. "Seriously, think of all those horror stories of people who went in and never surfaced again. It's funny, considering how entirely normal this town is otherwise."

Axel shrugged. "Every town has its urban legend, I guess. Anyway, all the disappearance stories happened way before we were born; I'm surprised that _no one_ has even dared to touch the water after all these years."

He grinned wickedly at Roxas. "About time you dispelled the myth…or proved it."

Roxas gave him a look. "No thanks, I like my life the way it is. You go ahead."

"It's okay, I'm with you on that first statement."

There was silence for a while, and Roxas found himself staring in fascination at the growing mound of shredded grass. He sighed in pity for their poor dead souls, cruelly felled in their salad days (or golden years, or whatever, he couldn't really tell the ages of grass now, could he?). He sighed in pity for his poor soul, practically killed by the brutally scorching sun…

"Stop sighing, will you?" Axel said irritably, snapping off another blade of grass.

…and a brutally unsympathetic friend.

Roxas glanced at Axel. His face was covered in a sheen of perspiration, and he was starting to look very moody (an understatement, really). Roxas grinned hugely.

"Told you you would die of heat in that outfit," Roxas said none too smugly. "Seriously, no one sane wears all black in summer."

Axel paused from his grass-murdering to glare at Roxas. "My pants are _grey_," he amended with a scowl. "And you know very well that the only things that match my hair are dark colours."

"You're much too vain," Roxas said, rolling his eyes. "You're a guy, you should be above this sort of things!"

Axel bristled. "Well, at least I'm taller and look cooler than you, shortie!"

Roxas gaped. "That's _low_!" he exclaimed. "Anyway, I can fight better than you," he added.

"Oh yeah, big deal, like that's going to get you anywhere in this town," Axel scoffed. "Learn a real talent, dude."

"Yeah what, like spending two hours every morning spiking your hair straight, Mister Vain?"

"I do _not_ spend-"

"Alright, alright, I was just joking!" Roxas said, cutting into Axel's heated reply. "Don't get so emo."

"I am _not_-"

"Man, this is so boring," Roxas interrupted once more, lying down on his back and stretching his feet out, smoothing out the grass stems poking the back of his head. "There's absolutely nothing to do except argue with you."

He made a face at the cheerfully iridescent clouds. "I wish my life were more exciting."

"And what were you saying a while ago about liking your life the way it is?" Axel asked, arching an eyebrow.

"This and that are completely different," Roxas said in a patronising manner.

Axel rolled his eyes. It was too hot for him to argue with someone who made as little sense as Roxas. "Well, _I_ wish the damn ice cream man would come now," Axel said. "It's past one already; he's late today. If I'd known I'd have left my house later, maybe I could have conserved two litres of perspiration."

"Don't go blaming the ice cream man," Roxas said. "You're the one who _insists_ on coming out to the park every day of the summer hols just to get a popsicle. I don't even understand why I follow you."

"But it's a tradition! We've done this every summer since we were _ten_. Okay, since I was ten and you were eight. That's practically forever!"

"Axel, you're ridiculously sentimental," Roxas laughed, lifting a lazy hand to punch Axel's shoulder.

"I am _not_ sentimental," Axel said heatedly, tossing the grass bits he was shredding into Roxas's face. "Ha," he added in a gloating way as Roxas sputtered and sat up, swatting the green bits off his face and clothes.

"Come on, there's no need to get violent," Roxas said in a wounded manner, patting his hair to make sure that it was free of grass bits. He realised lying on the grass had compressed his spiked hair into an awkwardly flattened mess. Shit, he thought, glaring at the back of Axel's immaculately waxed (and spiky) hair.

"Roxas, does coming to the park just to get ice cream every day bother you very much?" Axel asked, staring straight ahead.

"Hn?" Roxas said absently, trying to ruffle a more normal shape out of the back of his head.

"I…well I dunno, I always thought it was fun to eat sea-salt popsicles while sitting in front of the lake with the…even though the sun is blazing killing, but that, that kinda makes it…nice." Axel ended abruptly, rubbing his nose vigorously with one hand.

Roxas snorted, grinning. "How in the world do you make something so nice sound so lame?"

Axel ground his teeth in an irritable manner and began rubbing the other side of his nose.

"But you know," Roxas continued, "No matter how bland you make our popsicle picnics sound (there was a small sputter from his right at that phrase), I wouldn't exchange it for the world."

Axel hmmphed, gazing intently at the cottony clouds dipping into the lake, as if he could care less about Roxas' view on popsicle picnics. As if on cue, a distant tinkling sound heralded the arrival of the ice cream man, turning their heads in sync.

"Saved by the bell!" Roxas said brightly, winking at Axel as he got up.

"Saved from _what_?" Axel said indignantly as he stood up in a measured, lackadaisical manner, like he'd just decided to get up for no reason whatsoever, the ice cream man not having anything to do with it, of course. "I don't need to be saved from the likes of you!"

"Aw gosh you're so soppy but you don't want to admit it!" Roxas teased, noting how Axel's hands were fingering the spare coins in his pocket as he gazed in abject fascination in a direction opposite from the ice cream man.

Anticipating Axel's angry sputter of a reply, Roxas began running up the hillock, heading to the unused stone birdbath where they always waited for the ice cream man to pass by.

"I am not!" Axel yelled very unconvincingly at his back, setting up the grassy slope in a more controlled manner and arriving on the footpath just as Roxas was retrieving two popsicles from the ice cream man.

Axel glared daggers at Roxas' pitiably vulnerable back (except for the unfortunate fact that the daggers were purely metaphysical) as he passed his prepared coins into the hands of the smiling ice cream man, twitching the sides of his mouth weakly in an attempt to match the old man's enthusiasm.

Roxas stifled a snort of mirth as he passed Axel one of the turquoise-blue popsicles he was holding. "Bye uncle!" he said. "See you tomorrow!"

"Aye, boys," the uncle said, the wrinkling grin never leaving his face as he carried on pushing the trundling cart down the path.

"I am NOT soppy," Axel said as soon as they were out of earshot, walking slowly back to the grassy depression they had been resting in.

"And that's why I like you so much, best friend," Roxas grinned, sucking his popsicle with relish. "You respond so wonderfully to my insults."

"I have no idea why _I_ like you," Axel grumbled in response. "All you do is rib me. Must be some freak of nature."

"Oh…you freak!"

"What the hell? You're the freak!"

"Talk about mature!"

"Who started it!?"

"You said the first 'freak' sentence, ha!"

"With a _completely_ different meaning!"

"How many freaking meanings can there be for one word, you freak?"

You just said it yourself, FREAK!"

"Dude, it was supposed to be funny. Laugh."

"Oh yeah, it's so funny I forgot to laugh! Oh wait I just remembered – HA, HA, HA!"

"Your ice-cream is melting."

"Oh yeah!?"

"Uh, yeah."

Axel looked down to see sea-salt droplets wobbling at the edges of his popsicle, held in place only by the tenuous physics of tension. Then he looked at Roxas, happily eating his popsicle.

"I haven't even taken a bite!" Axel raged, brandishing the popsicle threateningly at Roxas. A few droplets splattered onto the ground and his shirt in response.

Axel gaped at the evil popsicle for a while, then let out a choked cry and began frantically trying to brush the small blobs of ice cream off his shirt one-handed.

"You'll get your hand all sticky," Roxas commented as Axel removed his hand from his shirt, all sticky.

"Thanks for the heads up," Axel said dryly, glaring down at his shirt and licking the evil popsicle with some malevolence.

"Cheer up, your shirt's black anyway, no one can tell," Roxas said.

Axel blinked. "That's true," he said with more spirit, a smile on his face.

"Excuse me!?" Roxas gaped, then started laughing. "You've had a face blacker than that shirt all afternoon and now you're smiling because your precious shirt isn't stained?"

"Hey, it wasn't cheap, alright!" Axel defended, embarrassment widening his smile tentatively.

Roxas grinned, smacking Axel on the back approvingly and sending more turquoise droplets flying. "You're hilarious. There's never a dull moment with you around."

"Thanks for the compliment," Axel said acidly, elbowing Roxas out of the way as he dropped down to the grass. "Now that I've made your day, make mine too - let's just sit in blissful quiet for a while and finish our ice creams in peace, okay?"

Roxas finished up the last of his popsicle and tossed the stick away with a flourish. "You were saying?" he asked with an innocent look, flopping down beside him.

Axel glared. "Okay, how about let's just sit in blissful quiet for a while, enjoying each other's company while marvelling at the view?"

"What, like a couple?!" Roxas asked, up for another verbal spar.

"Like a couple of good friends," Axel said firmly. "Now shut up and let me enjoy the view."

Roxas sniffed in mock-anger but didn't say anything, leaning back onto the grass and staring into the sky. Now that he was still, he felt the heat of the summer sun cocoon him again, and he exhaled slowly, letting his body relax into the coolness of the grass. The lulling clouds trailed ponderously across the brilliantly blue heavens, fluttering his eyelids once, twice, another time, before finally shrouding his mind in sleep.

"_What the hell do you think you're doing? Is this why he's been sleeping more and more everyday?"_

When next his eyes opened it was already late afternoon, the air savouring with a twilight breeze that rippled the cobalt oceans of the lake and the world more bronze than gold. The clouds had melted into thin wisps of cotton, the edges seeping through the sky and turning it indigo. Roxas inclined his head slightly to the left to see Axel asleep beside him, the corners of his mouth crinkled upwards.

Roxas stifled an urge to laugh. He'd always thought it funny how Axel smiled in his sleep. Who seriously did that for the entire duration of sleep? It was just weird. Either Axel was having a monotonously happy dream, or he was just…weird. Definitely weird, Roxas decided with a grin.

Careful not to disturb Axel, he sat up and stretched lazily, watching with interest the beguiling repetitive movements of the distorted clouds on the lake's surface.

"Hey Roxas, the back of your hair is all squashed up."

"Shut up and let me enjoy the view."


	2. Middle

Thanks to spiralheaven for the beta-ing!

Notes:  
Have I already apologised for OOC Axel? I wrote this before playing CoM, so I didn't realise how sadistic he could be. But…I just couldn't rewrite my fic with that Axel. It spoilt the fic. So I hope that you can see, in this circumstance, how this Axel can come to be.

Lastly…comments and criticism is very much loved!

* * *

"_Are you crazy? It will never work. He values truth more than his own happiness."_

Roxas opened his eyes to the sun trying to scorch his eyeballs out.

"Bloody summer sun," he grumbled under his breath, rolling himself off the bed to resume his sleep on the cooler parquet floor. That had been some weird dream though, he thought sleepily, a flash of black haze through his mind jogging his memory. He had a funny sense of déjà vu. For all the heat of the summer, his dreams always seemed to make up for it by being dark and cold.

Roxas eyes blinked slowly open, focusing dimly on the spinning globe at the far corner of his room. Dark…? He shook his head quickly and sat up, a sudden sliver of anxiety playing in his stomach. No way, his mind must be playing tricks on him again. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes again.

"Okay, come on, Roxas, think," he ordered himself firmly. "What does your house look like at night? It's not hard, just think black, and grey…" His eyes flew open, mind swirling with images in brown and orange. In a swift movement Roxas was off the floor, barreling down the stairs and out of the house.

"Axel! Open up! Axel!"

The door clicked open and Axel yawned down at the boy in front of him. "Roxas, it's nowhere near one –"

"Axel, what does your house look like at night?" Roxas demanded in an unnaturally flat voice.

One of Axel's eyebrows quirked upwards in a silent question, and even with the butterflies in his stomach he noted with envy the sublime arch of Axel's eyebrow and made a mental note to practise the art of eyebrow-quirking sometime soon.

"So…" Axel asked, breaking into Roxas' (frivolous) thoughts. "Are you going to tell me what's up or am I just going to go back and watch my Disney cartoons now?"

Roxas' initial train of thoughts derailed entirely. "No way, Disney? How old are you, man?" He asked, pushing past Axel to walk into his sitting room.

"A good 21 cm older," Axel said tersely, following.

"Darkwing Duck!" Roxas exclaimed, ignoring Axel's oft-repeated jibe at his height. "Awesome, I haven't watched that in millennia."

Roxas plunked himself on the sofa directly in front of the television. "Man, I wish I had cable," he said. "Thank you Axel, you are a godsend! A blessedly sentimental one."

"It has nothing to do with sentimentality!" Axel said in aghast, glaring at Roxas' intrusion of his sofa and dropping himself on an armchair instead. "It just happened to be, you know, on the television."

"Sure," Roxas said breezily, watching in fascination as the duck onscreen flapped his wings menacingly.

"So," Axel asked pointedly, toeing a footstool over and propping one leg on it. "Since you so kindly interrupted my morning TV routine, _and_ insulted me, would you like to tell me why you randomly showed up on my doorstep with cryptic questions about houses at night?"

"Oh, that," Roxas' brow furrowed. "I dunno, I think I'm getting forgetful or something. I couldn't remember what my house looked like at night, and I started getting freaked out because I thought I couldn't even remember what night looked like."

"But you can remember now?" Axel asked.

"Well…"Roxas shifted uncomfortably, staring a little too intently at the television. "Actually, no, I don't think…but I mean, it's probably just because I see it so often I don't take it in, right?"

"Yeah, probably," Axel said, frowning a little.

"Can you remember what night is like? What your house looks like at night?"

"I think so. I mean, I've never really thought about it before," Axel said slowly, scratching his head.

"Yeah, probably the same thing here. I just overreacted a bit," Roxas said, sounding more relieved. The residual worry lingered on his face though, even as he turned his eyes back to the television.

Axel stared at him for some length, then spoke. "Hey Roxas, how about this, after we have our popsicle we'll go over to your house and wait for night together, alright?"

Roxas broke into a grateful grin. "Sounds like a good idea," he said. "This is so silly though, I should stop scaring myself."

"Honestly, I'm having problems remembering what my house looks like at night too, so it's not just you," Axel said. "We're probably just so used to it we can't think of it in the sunshine. Especially when the sun is blazing away like this."

Roxas nodded eagerly. "Yeah, I know. I don't even know why this is bugging me so much."

"Don't worry about it. Everything will be okay by nightfall, trust me," Axel said, standing up and clapping a reassuring hand on Roxas' shoulder. "Now, can I get you anything to drink? We have some time till the ice cream man, I'll go pop us a bag of chips."

"I'm fine," Roxas said, smiling. He was looking forward to the ice cream man. It was one thing he always knew he could count on. Besides Axel and his amusing sappiness, of course.

**Middle  
**'_In a different world all that were once pipe dreams are reality.'_

"Roxas, I have to admit, though I've often said your room is boring, it contains an excellent stash of anime," Axel said, his eyes glued to the tiny screen at beside the door to Roxas' room.

"Hey, my room is not boring!" Roxas said, offended. "Look, I have a rotating fish stand…thing," he said convincingly, pointing at the said object at the head of his bed.

Axel threw it a cursory glance, then returned his eyes to the anime they were watching. "Right."

Then, "Awesome," Axel said, as the woman in the television suddenly split into several pieces, blood spattering everywhere.

Roxas cringed slightly. He didn't really like violence. "I forgot that bloodthirsty side of you," he said. "I can't believe someone so sappy can also like blood and gore so much."

"I am not sappy!" Axel said, annoyed. "We've been through this before!"

"You _are_," Roxas said adamantly. "You watch reruns of cartoons from childhood, you cling to old habits like no tomorrow, you smile in your sleep –"

"Wait, wait, hold up there," Axel said, now completely distracted from the television. "How is smiling in my sleep sappy?"

"It's just a very sappy thing to do," Roxas said firmly, as if it were the most irrefutable fact in the world.

"But you smile in your sleep too, and I don't hear you saying you're sappy!"

"Ah, but I don't watch cartoon reruns –"

"Because you don't have cable!"

"But I don't go to your house every morning to watch cartoon reruns!" Roxas said, as if that solved everything.

Axel did a pretty good impression of goggling at him. "Anyway, smiling is hardly considered sappy. Everyone does it."

"But in their sleep?"

"So? It's just an extension of smiling when you're awake. It probably just means I'm happy. Or something."

"Or sappy."

"Whatever!" Axel said. "I don't have a problem with my smiling in my sleep. You must be the one insecure about it."

"Why should I be?"

"How would I know!" Axel said in exasperation. "Maybe you don't want to be happy, who knows!"

"Now _that_ argument holds no ground," Roxas said in a lofty manner.

"Like yours did," Axel groused.

"Hey, Axel."

"What?"

Roxas had gone completely still, staring out the window. "Look. It's sunset."

Axel turned, his eyes widening in some surprise. The sky was aglow in red and purple streaks, reflected by the arc of long, flat clouds that pillowed across the sky. The sun had dipped till it was almost swallowed by the town buildings, a large orange disc that glowered with a last defiant fading light. The tips of the town buildings were lit with a hazy gold outline, but the buildings themselves were now almost indistinguishable in the gloaming, casting a long corridor of shadow across Roxas' house.

Axel blinked, shook his head, and blinked again. "Wow," he said finally. "I don't remember it looking like this."

Roxas nodded fervently. Excitedly, he got up from the rug they had been sitting on and ran down the stairs out of his house. After a moment's hesitation, Axel followed.

"So this is what my house looks like at night," Roxas said, sounding almost ridiculously in awe.

"Yep, like how it looks in the day…just at night," Axel quipped.

"Shut up!" Roxas laughed, punching Axel's shoulder lightly.

"So, a great weight off your shoulders, huh?"

"Yeah. Dumb, but yeah," Roxas said, unable to keep the grin off his face. He wasn't sure why he was so bothered by this, but he was more than glad that nature had proven to him he had nothing more than a faulty memory. He could now put this silly worry behind him.

"So, shall we go back and finish the anime?" Roxas asked.

"Well…I kind of want to see what my house looks like at night," Axel said, a little embarrassedly. "My memory seems a little cottony too."

"No worries," Roxas said, smiling. "I'll go with you. I think I need to refresh my memory of that too."

"Alright," said Axel as they started the five minute walk to his house. "Hey, how about we detour to the park for a bit? If we're quick we can see the park in sunset. I don't seem to ever remember having done so before."

"Sounds like a good idea," Roxas said, the white grin of his teeth obvious even in the waning light.


	3. End

Credit to spiralheaven for her wonderful beta-ing. :)

For those still reading, I hope you enjoy it and if you can, please leave a review with comments and suggestions on improvement! I spent quite a bit of effort on this fic, so I do hope to get some input from the readers. I really hope my fic is not as bad as the number of reviews seems to suggest…

But it has been a good journey for me, and I hope for some of you too.

Happy New Year!

* * *

"_You see, the cracks are already beginning to show. You cannot manipulate his mind forever."_

Roxas rolled over and fell off his bed with a thump. "Bloody hell," he grumbled, sitting up and rubbing his head. He was much too old to be doing the fall off his bed routine, really.

Cracking open his eyes drowsily as he clambered back to the warmth of his bed, he felt a slight jolt in his stomach to see his room so dark. Moonlight streamed through the open windows by his bed, but it didn't give him much comfort, lighting up his room in an ethereal glow and casting wildly disproportionate shadows across the junk littering his room.

Shaking off an involuntary shiver, Roxas lay down and drew the sheets all the way above his hair, tucking it around him and closing his eyes tight. He hadn't remembered how scary night was. He didn't like it at all. Much too black. He desperately wished morning would come again, hailing with its burning nuisance of a sun.

He sighed, feeling the warm air rebound off his blanket and warm his face snugly. Weird how he had been so desperate to see what night looked like a few hours ago. The whole debacle confused him. When night had finally arrived he had known exactly what to expect, but at the same time he felt like he had only just seen it for the first time. His powers of observation were really zilch, he thought wryly. This was probably one of many things he couldn't remember. He screwed up his face in thought.

He couldn't seem to remember much about winter. Probably too cold for his liking. Nor did he have many memories of school days. His summer holidays, with all its blistering sun and sea-salt ice creams were so much clearer to him. Interesting how all he had problems remembering were things he disliked or of little interest to him. It certainly proved how one-track his mind was.

Roxas resolved to expand his mind in the future and take more notice of his surroundings. It was really ridiculous the number of things he couldn't seem to recall, now that he thought about it properly. He wondered how he had managed to live through his life without being bothered what colour his school building was, or how tall his parents were…his parents.

Roxas opened his eyes suddenly, only to be greeted with the same blinding darkness he saw behind his eyelids. His parents…

He took several deep, calming breaths before drawing the blanket off his face and sitting up slowly, gazing at the moon balanced at the tip of the dimly lit church spire. Alright, no need to work himself up, Roxas told himself firmly. He pressed his eyes tightly shut, his hands clenched together in an unconscious prayer. No need, no need, no need…

Getting up slowly, he tried not to shiver at the somehow terrifying _blackness_ of everything as he inched his way to the door and pried it open, staring down the corridor. He wavered for a while, staring at the three other doors that mirrored his at the leftmost end. A sudden dizzying terror gripped him, and the next thing he knew he was out of his house and running, the claustrophobic darkness of night forgotten as he was seized by a greater fear of what he would find behind those doors, or maybe…what he wouldn't.

"What the hell?" Axel barked out as wrenched open his house door, cutting short the unceremonious banging to find himself attacked by a short, furry yellow –

"Axel, where are your parents?" Roxas demanded, a fistful of Axel's shirt in his hands, his eyes wide and darting.

"Whoa, whoa, watch the violence, dude," Axel said, prying Roxas' fingers off him.

"I want to see your parents!" Roxas shouted, grabbing Axel's shirt again.

Axel sighed. "What the hell are you on about, Roxas? It's past twelve…one…two? Something. Roxas? Roxas?"

Roxas had slid to the floor, clutching the doorframe with clawed fingers, his whole frame shaking pitifully.

"Roxas, what's wrong?" Axel asked in alarm, squatting down immediately and trying to peer into the boy's lowered face.

"I don't know, I don't know, I think I'm crazy," Roxas garbled, pressing both palms to his head as if he was trying to compress his brains. "I don't have any parents, I can't have any parents I don't know what they look like, I don't know what my friends look like I don't know what anybody looks like except you everything in my mind is blurry and –"

"Roxas. Roxas!" Axel said loudly, forcibly tearing his hands from his head. Roxas shut up immediately, shoulders heaving in tandem with ragged breaths as he stared unseeingly into Axel's worried eyes.

"Roxas, calm down," Axel said steadily. "Tell –"

A shrill ringing sound ripped through the silence and Roxas and Axel started, falling backwards in fright. They stared at each other for awhile, equal looks of blankness on their faces.

"Oh, oh, it's my _phone_," Axel said in a voice of startling revelation, standing up just as the ringing stopped. There was a sound of a door opening followed by pattering footsteps, then a bleary woman's voice wafted down to them.

"Axel dear, where are you? Roxas' parents just called. Is he here? They found him out of bed and thought he might have come over, though why they think he would have at this –"

"He's here!" Axel shouted back, giving Roxas a half-smile, as if chiding him for imagining things again. In response, Roxas closed his eyes and leaned his head tiredly against the doorframe.

"Oh, he is?" his mother's voice sounded surprised. "Well then tell him his parents want him to go home now."

"No," Roxas tried to say, but it came out as a harsh whisper. He shook his head and cleared his throat, opening his mouth to try again.

"No," Axel shouted back to his mother. "He uh, Roxas wants to stay for the night. He can, right? Anyway it's not safe for him to walk back now."

"Well…hang on a moment." After a short pause, his mother said, "His parents are okay with it, so I guess that's fine with me. Don't stay up too late, boys! Though really, what's with that Roxas, gallivanting around past twelve, one, or whatever time it is…" Her voice disappeared along with her footsteps as a door shut somewhere above them.

"Thank you," Roxas said, smiling gratefully at Axel. He sounded a lot more normal now.

"No worries," Axel said, hunching down again. "So are you alright now? Did you have a bad dream or what?"

Roxas shook his head, hugging his knees tightly to his chest. "I…it was the same thing as yesterday," he said slowly, as if trying to explain his thoughts to himself. "I couldn't remember a lot of things. Including my parents."

"Yeah, I caught that. I also remember a bit where you said you only remembered me," Axel said with a smirk. "Should I be honoured?"

What was worrying was that Roxas completely overlooked this little dig. "I got really confused, because I wasn't sure what was real anymore, and whether these things, everything…existed?" Roxas shook his head vigorously. "Oh man, I feel like my brain is going to explode."

"Hey, cool it," Axel said reassuringly. "You probably can't think it through because it's too late at night for that."

"Maybe," Roxas said doubtfully, resting his head on his knees as his shoulders slumped.

"Anyway, you already know your parents are real, right?"

"I guess…" Roxas said.

Axel grinned suddenly. "You see, it really probably just is a result of your overactive imagination and under-active observation skills."

Roxas didn't answer, and Axel rocked back and forth for a while on his heels before breaking the tense silence.

"Why don't you want to go home?" Axel asked.

Roxas' hands stiffened. "I…want to remember what my parents look like before I go home. I'll stay up all night until I remember," he finally said in a voice completely devoid of emotion.

There was another short pause, then Roxas felt a weight on his right shoulder. "I, uh…don't worry too much, alright?" Axel paused, unsure how to phrase his words. "I don't know what I can do, but everything will turn out okay in the end, trust me. And until then, well I'm always here, alright?"

Axel patted his shoulder a little awkwardly, smiling in a worried but encouraging and entirely Axel manner. Roxas shook his head and couldn't stop the tears that came.

"Oh gosh, I am even less cut out for motivational speeches than I thought," Axel said, sounding rather horrified.

Roxas laughed, shaking his head some more. "Thanks Axel, just…thanks," he said gratefully.

"Oh, that's great!" Axel said, the tension visibly ebbing from his shoulders. "Not that I'm glad you're crying, I mean, just that I didn't make things worse or –"

Roxas laughed even harder, more tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. "Axel, you're so funny, I don't know how you can bungle an encouraging speech by sounding so completely stiff and unwilling about it, but still be so completely sincere about it."

"You're still insulting me at a time like this?" Axel said in a weird mixture of offended relief.

Roxas shook his head, unable to talk from a combination of laughing and crying. He felt the frustrating knot of confusion, fear and helplessness loosen up a little under the comforting pressure of Axel's hand on his shoulder.

Axel smiled down at him. "Okay, come on, let's get inside the house," he said. "I'll stay up with you. Good thing I have cable, they probably have some centuries-old Disney cartoons on rerun."

"Yay for Disney, panacea for all evils of the world," Roxas said, feeling a little of his old spirit returning. "Nothing like Disney classics to throw on the rose-tinted lenses and completely distort your view of this cruel, twisted reality we live in."

"Thank you for your bounding optimism," Axel said as he flipped on the television and settled comfortably on the sofa, throwing his legs over one side.

Roxas took the armchair and drew his legs up to him again, watching as Donald waddled onto the screen, but even Disney couldn't distract him now. Axel glanced over at him, but did not speak. Roxas couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not. Axel made him forget all his worries for a while, but he would never be able to help Roxas solve this problem. Axel had no idea what was going on with him, and he didn't think he wanted Axel to know either. To understand meant he would have to be going through the same thing himself, and he didn't want that to happen to Axel. Despite his badass attitude and flame-red hair, Roxas believed that Axel was really the most innocent of them two. Perhaps because he didn't think so much, and acted mostly on gut – he was so honest in his emotions, so transparent…plus he had that odd streak of sentimentality in him.

Roxas smiled slightly, turning to see Axel's eyes closed, his chest heaving rhythmically. He was already asleep. Roxas shook his head slightly. And here he'd said he'd stay up all night with him.

Roxas turned his attention back the television, though he hardly took in what was happening on the screen. When he finally drifted into a wakeful sleep a few hours later, his mind was still whirling in a maelstrom of disjointed memories and empty gaps, and the only thing he remembered of the Disney cartoons on the television was the credits flashing, and a dim wondering if he would find his happy ending too.

"_Your well intentions have too many loopholes. I told you there is no need for me to intervene. You will fail."_

At the first dawn of day, when the world awoke in comforting hues of red and orange, Roxas let himself out of Axel's house and began walking. He had no idea where he was walking to, past the multi-coloured houses and few faces out at this early hour, across the worn grey pavements and between the tree-lined roads…but he continued walking anyway, his hands unconsciously clenching and releasing with every step he took.

Nothing made any more sense than it did last night. He still couldn't remember his parents as anything more than a dim outline, or anything else he could not recall last night. When he tried to search through his memories, the same images kept flashing back to him. Lying around the park with Axel, sea-salt ice cream, watching television, walking around the town alone or with Axel, his endless quibbles with Axel and sometimes sitting at the top of the church tower enjoying the breeze. The more Roxas thought about it, the fishier everything seemed. It was as if someone was playing with his memories, selectively retrieving information from his mind.

'Roxas!'

Roxas blinked and stopped walking, finding himself staring at a familiar birdbath, its mossy surface charmingly aged in the soft morning light. He'd made his way to the park without his realisation. Roxas turned, staring at the blond girl standing at the foot of the grassy knoll where he and Axel usually camped out. Roxas frowned. He'd never seen this girl before, he was sure…he thought. He walked a little doubtfully towards her.

'Roxas, I…I…' the girl looked nervous, her fingers twisting the flimsy white material of her dress. Her large blue eyes darted everywhere except his face.

Roxas felt a queasy feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. Strange girls coming up to chat with him after strange events had been plaguing him did not seem to bode well. He wondered fleetingly if maybe she was going to confess a crush on him or something. That would explain why she knew him and he didn't. Perhaps she had admired him from afar for ten years, since he had been a sprightly young sunbeam. That sounded good. It'd show that prat Axel, getting love confessions every other month, which was really quite ridiculous, considering the size of their town and –

'You've got to stop thinking so much,' the girl finally burst out, her hands fisting onto her skirt.

Roxas' mind shut down for a moment – due to shock, not acquiescence of her request – then began clanking at twice the speed.

"Uh, what?" he asked, trying to fit a dozen reasons to this peculiar demand. Pity it wasn't the crush.

'I…there's a limit to how much intrusion this place can take. This is _your_ place, this –'

"Wait, what intrusion?" Roxas interrupted, his mind swimming. "What the hell are you talking about?"

'Roxas, just listen to me,' the girl said urgently. 'This is what you want. Don't give it up.'

"Excuse me? How do you know what _I_ want?" Roxas demanded, confusion boiling over into anger. "What _I_ want to know is what you're blathering on about! Stop being so cryptic!"

The girl looked frightened. 'I can't, I can't!' she said, shaking her head vigorously. She looked desperately unhappy. 'That'll spoil everything for sure. Just trust me, Roxas. Stop questioning this world. It is where you want to be. Don't deny your happiness.'

"How can I trust you when I don't know who you are or what you're talking about?" Roxas seethed, his hands clenching.

The girl looked like she was about to start crying.

'I'm sorry, Roxas, I'm so sorry,' she said, her voice hitching. 'But I can't keep doing this, it'll break down. I'm sorry, I –'

"Stop apologizing and start talking!" Roxas shouted, but the girl shook her head. She seemed to be talking more to herself than him now, twisting her skirt in her hands as she spoke.

'Roxas, I'm so sorry, Roxas, but isn't it possible? I really wanted, I just…'

"Roxas!"

"Axel," Roxas said instinctively, turning in the direction of the voice.

The girl's voice reverberated softly inside his head, as if coming from within his mind. '_I just wanted you to be happy.'_

In fearful bewilderment Roxas turned back to the girl, but she was gone. She was…gone? Roxas swivelled around frantically. How would she be gone? The undulating grounds of the park stretched visibly on three sides, and directly in front of him was the lake. Surely…

"Roxas! There you are," Axel said, scooting hurriedly down the grassy knoll to where Roxas was peering into the water. "Man, you had me scared for a while when I woke up to find you gone and not at home either. I almost thought you'd off to commit, uh, never mind."

Axel suddenly noticed the intense way Roxas was staring at the lake. "Wait, Roxas, you're not going to drown yourself, right?" Axel asked quickly, his words tripping over each other.

"Of course not," Roxas said, still studying the smooth surface of the water. "I've got better things to do with my life."

"Oh, that's great, yeah, good, good life, yes," Axel rambled, unable to control his relief.

"I wonder…if I jump…" Roxas muttered to himself.

"What!" Axel almost yelped. "I thought you just said you weren't going to jump!"

Roxas eyed Axel critically. "I said I wasn't going to drown myself," he said patiently.

"But…uh…" Axel blinked at him, pointing somewhat confusedly at the water.

Roxas ignored the silent question. "Axel, no one has ever touched the lake water before, right?"

"You already know this," Axel said slowly, frowning at him. "No, not that I know of."

"Axel, listen," Roxas said urgently. "There was this weird girl talking to me, saying very strange things about not questioning this world and things like that."

"Not questioning this world?" Axel asked in confusion.

"Yes," Roxas said, nodding. "But the funniest thing was when I turned away for a moment, she'd disappeared. The lake is the only place she could have gone into without me seeing her leave."

Axel's mouth dropped open and he backed away slightly. "Roxas, you're hallucinating, right? What you're telling me is just… unbelievable."

"And you think I don't know that?" Roxas fired back, a sudden anger stiffening his body. "But weird things have been happening to me and I think she's the cause of it. I have to find her again, and I think the key is this lake."

He knelt down and exhaled sharply. "I'm going to test the water," he said firmly, more to himself than Axel.

"Are you crazy?!" Axel practically shrieked. "It's haunted! You might disappear! Why do you think _no one_ in town has ever touched it?"

"Shut up, Axel," Roxas snapped, though his voice held a hint of a quaver. "Don't think I don't know what I'm doing. Anyway, the people who disappeared were fully submerged in the water, and I'm just dipping my hand in first."

Roxas stared intently at his preternaturally solid reflection in the motionless water, steeling his nerves as he raised his hand. Taking a deep breath, he let his hand fall.

"Wait!" Axel yelled, and Roxas stopped with a surprised yelp, his heart thudding painfully in his chest.

"What?" he demanded angrily, forcing himself to breathe slowly.

Axel looked like he was having an internal battle. "I'll…I'll hold your wrist," he finally said firmly, kneeling down as well and engaging Roxas' left wrist in a death grip. He then proceeded to inch as far away from the body of water as possible.

Roxas laughed, but nonetheless he'd never felt so comforted by having the circulation in his hand cut off before.

"Okay, I'm doing it," he said to nobody in particular.

Taking a deep breath, he plunged his free hand into the water. There was a moment of silence, then…

"You're still here," Axel said in some wonderment, though he did not relinquish his hold on Roxas' hand.

"Yes, I noticed that," Roxas said a little dryly, his body completely still.

"So…the water is normal?" Axel asked. "It was a baseless urban legend all these years?"

Roxas shook his head slowly, his hand still half-submerged in the water. "No, it feels…different, somehow. I can't explain it."

He looked excitedly up at Axel, pulling his hand out. "I think this is it."

Axel's face immediately clouded over with fear, and his grip on Roxas tightened even further, if that was possible. "Don't tell me you're going to…" he said in a half-whisper.

"Yes," Roxas said determinedly, prying Axel's fingers off his wrist and standing up.

"No…No!" Axel burst out, somehow managing to step between Roxas and the lake. "If what you said about the water is true, the urban legend must be true too! You'll never come back!"

"I'll take my chances," Roxas said coldly, trying to sidestep Axel.

"Roxas, don't be stupid!" Axel said. "You might _die_, you know, and for what?"

"To find out what the hell is going on," Roxas said.

"But is it really so important? You're blowing things out of proportion. You probably just have a faulty memory or something."

"Then can you explain the girl?" Roxas demanded. "I know this much, Axel, it's definitely more than a faulty memory."

"But…" Axel paused, then his face suddenly lit up with understanding. "The _girl_! Don't you see? She was warning you! She was helping you!"

"Helping me?" Roxas snorted.

"Yes. Just let it go. You've lived the past fifteen years of your life fine this way, why endanger it for something you're not even sure of?"

"Don't you see? With this at the back of my mind, I can't live like I did before. It's pointless," Roxas said.

There was a pause.

"So it's pointless?" Axel's voice had turned quiet. "Your life? Our friendship?"

"Axel…no," Roxas sighed, the anger deflating out of his shoulders. "Of course not. But I can't let this go. I have to find out what's going on. Why I can't remember so many things. You can't change my mind."

He pushed past Axel to stand at the edge of the lake. "Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves. I may just re-emerge from the water, soaked to my bone and nursing a cold for the next two weeks!" Roxas said in a cheerfulness that didn't quite touch his eyes.

"Roxas…" Axel said defeatedly, but before he could say anything further, a familiar trill drifted to their ears.

"The ice cream man!" Axel said in surprise, looking at his watch. "It's one already?"

Roxas blinked. He backed away slowly, his eyes suddenly fixated on the stone birdbath, the ugly scars of rust obvious in the noon sun. "But…that's not possible, when I saw the girl it was still early morning, and more than two hours can't have passed since then."

Axel frowned. "You probably just didn't notice. Look, my watch says it's almost one." He tapped the said item.

"No, it can't be," Roxas said, suddenly scared. "It just can't be. There's something wrong here. I'm going."

"Roxas, don't you see this is a sign? Stay."

"No, it's not a sign, it's a trap," Roxas said.

"A trap, huh?" Axel said bitterly. "We've been eating sea-salt popsicles at midday _every_ day of the summer holidays for the past seven years, and that's what you call it? I thought our friendship meant more to you than that." He paused. "It does to me."

Roxas sighed unhappily. Why did he have to make this harder than it already was? "Axel, that's not what I meant…"

"Didn't you say only a few days ago you wouldn't exchange this for the world?"

The tinkling of the bell in the distance grew louder, and Roxas closed his eyes, savouring the memory of the brilliantly coloured sky and the sticky, salty tang on his tongue. Perhaps…

He opened his eyes to see out of the corner of his eye the ice cream cart lumbering up the familiar hill path, the wide smile of the ice cream man visible even from this distance. He felt a shiver run through him.

"I'm sorry, Axel, but don't you see? The problem goes beyond this world," Roxas said with a sudden understanding.

The ice cream man was coming.

"Goodbye, Axel," he said, stepping to the edge of the lake again.

Roxas stared unwaveringly at his reflection in the water, the tenseness of his body, the grim lines of his mouth. He nodded resolutely at his reflection. He was ready.

Roxas blinked in surprise as Axel's reflection joined his and he felt a hand grip his shoulder.

"Well, our friendship goes beyond this world too," Axel said gruffly, then smiled. "I think we can break our tradition for a day."

Roxas found his reflection smiling back.

"Shall we go?" he said.

"Hell yeah," Axel said. "Like I said, it's about time someone, _someones_, dispelled this urban legend."

"Famous last words," he added dryly.

The last thing Roxas heard before the harsh whistling of water past his ears was the sound of their laughter, and in a way, he thought, it wasn't that different from their usual summer afternoons. When Roxas' feet fell beyond where the floor of the lake should be, his heart didn't lurch as much as he thought it would, and he smiled instead, closing his eyes on the abysmal black they were sinking down to, Axel's hand on his shoulder.

Roxas opened his eyes and sat up in bed to see Namine staring fixedly at the floor and a smugly smiling Marluxia next to her, and without understanding why, his hand flew to his shoulder, his mouth forming two voiceless syllables.

It was the last dream Roxas woke from with a smile on his face.

**End  
**'_In a different world  
_(THERE ARE MANY WORLDS, BUT THEY SHARE THE SAME SKY  
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY)  
_he will be happy.'_

* * *

deviantartDOTcom/deviation/33198128/ 


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